Individual Attitudes Towards Others, Misanthropy Analysis in a Cross-Country Perspective

In general, misanthropy has been analyzed taking into account residents of one country and just comparing results. Instead of doing that, we employ 2004 International Social Survey Program and analyze its determinants in a cross-country model taking into account both individual characteristics and country effects. Our model shows, as expected, that misanthropy could be explained by some sociodemographic and economic individual characteristics. For instance, being a woman, having a university degree, being married lowers misanthropy while being young; having a low income, having no political preferences, being self-employed makes people more misanthropic. Moreover, in order to capture fix effects, we included (dummies) variables per country of residence and almost all of them result significant in determining misanthropy. This last result indicates that not only individual characteristics matters but also some factors regarding context also play a significant role. Finally, we show that there is a strong relationship among our misanthropy ranking of countries and two corruption perception rankings.misanthropy, trust, cross-country research, individual attitudes

The perception of corruption in a cross-country perspective: Why are some individuals more perceptive than others?

The concept of corruption varies widely depending on societies and people. We expect that context influences on corruption perception. Previous studies shed light on the incidence of individual characteristics on the perceived level of corruption and show the effect of country of residence. In order to extend this previous research, the aim of this paper is to analyze how context, culture and/ or history shape corruption perception considering specific country characteristics. The data source is the module on Citizenship of the 2004 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Taking into account some subsamples (considering country characteristics such us: size, European Union membership, etc.), we estimate ordered probit models. We find that the incidence of country of residence remains even when we consider countries with some characteristic in common.corruption, microeconomic behavior, comparative research, public opinion, ISSP

Novel molecular targets in hepatic stellate cells for the treatment of liver fibrosis

Liver fibrosis is the result of chronic liver diseases that lead to cell death and scarring due to extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition. Hepatic stellate cells (HSC) are myofibroblast-like cells that activate upon injury and produce ECM. HSC activation, from quiescent HSC (qHSC) to activated HSC (aHSC) is controlled by the pro-fibrogenic cytokine transforming growth factor-beta (TGFβ) and regulates the production of alpha-smooth muscle actin (αSMA) and collagen-I, key markers of aHSC. aHSC contribute to the progression of liver fibrosis, so finding novel drugs that prevent or reverse the activation of HSC is an important step in developing effective treatments for liver fibrosis. We investigated the contribution of mitochondrial metabolism towards HSC activation and in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, we targeted metabolic pathways that are involved in HSC activation. Excessive ECM deposition is the process that ultimately causes the scarring of the liver causing cirrhosis. Thus, we studied the molecular mechanisms driving collagen-I export in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, targeted key proteins in this pathway to find novel targets to treat liver fibrosis

Behind The Design

Higher education is a place of learning and such a space requires the optimal design for a learning setting. While classrooms are an important space for learning in higher education, they are not the only place, where learning occurs on campuses. These spaces outside of the classroom are referred to in ways such as “private study areas”, “writing centers,” and “third spaces”, but in this paper, these spaces are referred to as informal study spaces. These spaces are identified as any space, outside of a formal classroom setting, where students regularly congregate for academic purposes. Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) has a myriad of informal study spaces, old and new, spread throughout the Richmond, KY campus. In order to narrow the study and develop area-specific observations, this study focuses on three select informal study spaces on EKU campus. The informal study spaces analyzed include the Noel Studio, the Powell Student Center, and the Center for STEM Excellence. This research seeks to highlight the history of the identified informal study spaces, their progress through design, and the design\u27s impact on the users of the spaces. The study also identifies what students and staff envision for the future of these spaces. To gain both the staff and student perspectives, a student survey is implemented alongside in-depth interviews, which are administered to voluntary faculty respondents. The progress of the design intents and impacts, significant and observable behaviors, thought processes, or changes in the observed parties, are documented in an ephemera book to give members of EKU tangible documentation of this research

Job satisfaction and the individual educational level, re-assessing their relationship

We examine the factors that shape job satisfaction and in particular, the direct and indirect effects of the educational level. Our motivation is based on extending a large body of researches that is focused on private sector data by employing a larger and widely heterogeneous set of micro-data and by including non-linear effects and indirect effects of education. Our dataset includes 25 countries and it comes from the 2007 survey carried out by the International Social Survey Program. We estimate a probit model which includes country-effects in order to control for specific environmental factors. Findings indicate that job satisfaction is negatively related to being male, living in a big city, the number of worked hours per week, and not being self-employed. We also find that age registers a non-linear impact and we provide evidence that individual educational level shows a positive effect but with a decreasing growth rate and also an indirect effect through earned income.job satisfaction, cross-country research

Qualitative and Comparative Analysis of Stormwater management in the Tan Brook Watershed

The Tan Brook Watershed is both a daylighted and diverted underground stream that runs through the Town Center of Amherst and the campus of UMass Amherst. Various stormwater management practices have been used to infiltrate stormwater runoff from streets, lots, buildings and/or vehicles. These systems are custom-designed relative to the surrounding permeability of the soil, vegetation and geographical topography. Some systems have higher success rates than others

The perception of corruption in a cross-country perspective: why are some individuals more perceptive than others?

We examine the foundations of corruption perception at the micro-level. Using micro and macro data, we focus on the incidence of personal characteristics and country effects. We extend previous researches by estimating sub-models taking into account differences in the countries of residence. Our database comes from the 2004 International Social Survey Program survey that includes more than 35 countries. Ordered probit models were estimated in order to study the impact of independent variables on the perceived level of corruption. This article argues that there are socio-demographic variables that play a relevant role in determining corruption perception (such as: gender, education, etc.). We find that country of residence matters and the model shows some relevant patters of behavior. Finally, we find a strong relationship between our ranking of countries and the Corruption Perception Index computed by Transparency International

The Protected Culture of Strawberry Plants Growing under Plastic Tunnels

Strawberry growers in Australia produce about 72,000 tonnes of fruit worth $450 million each year. The main production centers are located in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, with production in Queensland worth$240 million. There are smaller industries in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. Production on the Sunshine Coast in south-eastern Queensland in open field conditions is severely affected by rain most seasons. The fruit can also be lost to various diseases, including grey mould and stem-end rot. We were interested in determining the productivity of plants growing under plastic high tunnels and protected from rainfall. Experiments were conducted over four years from 2012 to 2015 on the Sunshine Coast to compare the productivity of plants growing under tunnels with that of plants growing outdoors. Strawberries are also produced in Florida under similar growing conditions as in south-eastern Queensland, with production also affected by rain and diseases. Other experiments were conducted in Florida to assess the effect of different chemicals for the control of powdery mildew, an important disease affecting strawberry plants growing under protected cropping. Plants growing under tunnels often have a higher incidence of this disease compared with plants growing outdoors. In the first two years’ experiments at Palmwoods on the Sunshine Coast, with slightly lower than average rainfall, the marketable yields of the plants growing under the tunnels were 24 to 38% higher than the yields of the plants growing outdoors. The higher marketable yields under protected cropping were due to less rain damage and grey mould in the plants growing under the tunnels. In the third year, supplementary over-head irrigation was given to the plants growing outdoors to give a water application about twice that of the long-term average for the season at Palmwoods. In the fourth year, no supplementary irrigation was given, and rainfall was about 80% of that of the long-term average for Palmwoods. In these last two experiments, half the plants in each group received the standard sprays to control grey mould, while the other half of the plants received none of these sprays. Both groups of plants received the standard sprays used to control pests, and other diseases, including powdery mildew. The relative marketable yields of the plants under the tunnels were more than 200% the yields of the plants outdoors in year three (over-head irrigation outdoors), but about a 25% lower in year four (no over-head irrigation outdoors). Average day temperatures under the tunnels were about 3o to 4oC warmer in August in 2015 than in 2014. There were no differences in the incidence of grey mould in sprayed and unsprayed plots under the tunnels. These results suggest that plants growing under tunnels may not need to be sprayed for this disease. Overall, the four cultivar/breeding lines responded similarly to the growing environment and the spray programs. In 2012 and 2013, ‘Festival’ had a lower incidence of rain damage and/or grey mould than the other cultivar (Rubygem) and breeding lines, and ‘Rubygem’ had a higher incidence of small and/or misshaped fruit. In 2014 and 2015, ‘Festival’ generally had a lower incidence of rain damage and/or grey mould and powdery mildew than 'Breeding Line 1', and a higher incidence of small and/or misshaped fruit, especially when the plants were growing under the tunnels. A model based on rainfall over the past 61 years at Palmwoods on the Sunshine Coast was used to estimate the time taken to recover the initial cost of the tunnels. The time taken to recover the cost of the tunnels varied from three to fifteen years, depending on the annual rainfall, relative production losses, and base productivity. The average pay-back period was five years, but can be reduced to three years with heavy rainfall. Other factors that might influence the economics of the tunnels include the life-span of the plastic and the rate of light transmission over time, and the susceptibility of individual tunnel structures to wind damage in different growing areas

The representation of protein complexes in the Protein Ontology

Representing species-specific proteins and protein complexes in ontologies that are both human and machine-readable facilitates the retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of genome-scale data sets. Although existing protin-centric informatics resources provide the biomedical research community with well-curated compendia of protein sequence and structure, these resources lack formal ontological representations of the relationships among the proteins themselves. The Protein Ontology (PRO) Consortium is filling this informatics resource gap by developing ontological representations and relationships among proteins and their variants and modified forms. Because proteins are often functional only as members of stable protein complexes, the PRO Consortium, in collaboration with existing protein and pathway databases, has launched a new initiative to implement logical and consistent representation of protein complexes. We describe here how the PRO Consortium is meeting the challenge of representing species-specific protein complexes, how protein complex representation in PRO supports annotation of protein complexes and comparative biology, and how PRO is being integrated into existing community bioinformatics resources. The PRO resource is accessible at http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro/